Korean Airlines’ Risk Assessment Drove Early Avoidance of Ukraine

A Korean Air Lines passenger aircraft makes its approach at Incheon International Airport in South Korea.

Bloomberg News

South Korea’s two national carriers, Korean Air Lines Co. and Asiana Airlines, were among a handful of carriers that had stopped flying over eastern Ukraine prior to the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 last week, a decision prompted by their own internal risk-assessment divisions.

The two airlines said last week they had changed flight paths to avoid flying over Ukraine in early March, well ahead of other airlines, because of security concerns. They said their risk-assessment divisions gather information around the clock to establish possible threats to their aircraft and make recommendations about route changes or other steps to ensure safety.

Korean Air is also one of the first airlines to suspend service to Tel Aviv, halting flights there Friday. That came before a rocket attack Tuesday near the Israeli city’s airport prompted the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration to issue a ban on flights there and European air-safety regulators to issue a safety warning.

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Asked why Korean Air is so conservative in its risk assessment, Korean Air spokesman Seo Dong-il said: “Passenger safety comes before anything else. We don’t compromise safety for profit.”

Korean Air said currently there are no other routes it is avoiding in conflict zones around the world. Its base in Seoul is less than 40 kilometers from the heavily armed border with North Korea. South Korean airlines routinely avoid North Korean airspace.

An official at Seoul’s Transport Ministry, the aviation regulator, said South Korea had received a series of warnings, known as notices to airmen, from Ukrainian aviation authorities since late February.

But those warnings applied to airspace over Crimea, an area in southern Ukraine that was annexed by Russia. Unrest in the area created uncertainty over who controlled its airspace. But the notice didn’t extend to eastern Ukraine, where Flight 17 was shot down in a rebel-held area.

The International Civil Aviation Organization—typically the global clearinghouse for notices about potential overflight dangers—had issued a warning in April that airlines should avoid southern Ukraine airspace.

“According to the ICAO regulations, the aviation authority in any conflict-zone is responsible for issuing a warning to ICAO member nations. So, we just relay such a warning to our airlines. It’s up to them whether to suspend routes or find other paths,” the ministry official said.

Korean Air also discouraged comparisons between Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 and Korean Air Flight 007, which was shot down by Soviet fighters in September 1983 after straying into Soviet airspace on its way to Seoul from New York. “There’s no connection whatsoever between the two accidents,” the airline said in a statement.